Strangers Through a Window
by Vesper Moonshine
Summary: A moment between Roy and Riza when they are young and awkward.


**I really don't know where this came from, I just felt like writing it. It really doesn't have a point just a Royai moment, from when they were young. Every since I found this wonderful site I've been story happy, bounding away at my poor keyboard, so here you are**

**Oh, and I don't own them. I just obsess over them.**

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**Strangers Through a Window**

**by**

**Vesper Moonshine**

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Summers were unbearably hot in the southeast, with a sticky heat that boost ceiling fan sales and made people throw out their leather furniture. Citizens would step out of their showers, towel dry, button their lite cotton shirts, zip up their trousers, slip into airy dresses, and then, within minutes, be wet with a sweat that would persist for the remainder of the day.

Nowhere was the suppressing heat more intense than in the Hawkeye Study. Hawkeye sen-sei didn't own a ceiling fan, and if he ever let the air run it did vary little to cool the stuffy room because the doors remained always shut, whether Roy Mustang was on the inside or the outside of them. As it happened, that day Roy was on the inside, tugging at his sweat soaked collar and wondering at how Hawkeye sen-sei withstood the heat in his long black over robe without falling on the floor in fatigue.

Roy had spent that afternoon toiling over a small, but-according to sen-sei,-important facet of fire Alchemy called physics. The subject was tedious, but he preferred anything to Applied Alchemical Symbolism. Roy could tell you the meaning of nearly all the symbols and arrays he'd learned in his studies, but to draw them himself gave him a face hotter than the hottest summer day from shear embarrassment at his amateur scribbles. One day, he vowed, he'd find a way of drawing as little of them as possible without getting a tattoo. He didn't like needles either.

Yet, if not as bad as suffering through sen-sei' glorified Art lessons, Physics had, nonetheless, lost all appeal as sen-sei lectured on about material Roy had spent the the whole day reading for himself. So, the Study's only window began to look like pretty good alternative entertainment. It looked out on a fair-sized garden, with a lone Cyprus tree flanking the gardens' square lay out that burgeoned with bushes and vines of nearly over ripe fruits and vegetables. Little Riza Hawkeye was out there in the fresh air he envied, sauntering between the bushes and recruiting the grubby vegetables for service in the approaching supper time meal. She picked each one delicately and wiped away any dirt with her handkerchief, and Roy knew she would also wash them thrice before even thinking of chopping them, after which she would wash them again.

He would never admit it out loud, but she intimidated him. He could never figure out what she was thinking, or why she did the eccentric things she did. She was so quiet, but some things he came to know through equally quiet observation; Like her cooking habit's. She never chopped anything on the counter, always on the cutting board, and all the culinary additives she chopped were strangely symmetrical, or as close to it as a mere mortal could get.

As tempting morsels steamed in copper pots and spiced meat broiled in the oven she would read, and not once look up from the pressed pages of her Amestrian history to check the clock. She used no timer, but dinner still never burned. How many other thirteen year old girls could do that? It wasn't like she had an active supervisor telling her the proper way to slice tomatoes or time a turkey dinner. Hawkeye sen-sei seldom spoke of anything besides Alchemy, let alone to his daughter, and her mother was gone, so who, and how, or, maybe more importantly, why?

He watched her lift a handful of what looked like basil up to inspect in the light, and after she was satisfied, watched her set it in the basket hooked around her arm. Was her mother pretty like that, he wondered. That was another odd feature of his new home; memories didn't talk there like they did other places. No old stories, no old jokes, no old pictures, nothing left it's imprint on the Hawkeye estate except silence. He had asked where sen-sei' wife was on first arriving and had been told she had died, and no more, he didn't even know her name.

Roy set one of his elbows on the desk to give his chin support, keeping his eyes focused out the window. She wore a serene shade of blue that set off her yellow hair like the sun in an azure sky, and as she turned -turned? Oh no! She'd turned to the window and saw him staring at her. He jumped, snapping back his head to look at sen-sei's scribbles on the black board, and he knocked his knee on the bottom of his desk. He couldn't suppress a yelp, grabbing his knee in pain. At the sound Hawkeye sen-sei turned to stare curiously down at his apprentice.

"Is there something painful about the structure of an atom?" Hawkeye sen-sei delivered flatly, like the untouched surface of a mountain lake.

_Huh? Oh, the lesson! Physics!_

"No, sen-sei. I...I hit my knee." Roy offered, weakly and wide eyed.

Managing to move no more features than necessary, manly his mouth, Hawkeye sen-sei said, "Did you lose control of it some how?"

_What!? _Roy gaped for a mere moment, then, "I think I'm developing a tick from all the sitting." He said it quickly, and smiled sheepishly after. Hawkeye sen-sei nodded, and it was so mellow Roy would have missed it had he not been staring nervous holes into his teachers face.

"That should be easily fixed," Roy felt himself exhale. "Harrison can alway use help in the stables. You can stretch your legs there." Roy felt himself inhale just a little too quickly, the air catching in his throat.

He coughed away the hitch before he spoke. "Yes sen-sei."

Roy rose cautiously from his seat, sliding his knees around to the side off the chair before rising. He bowed to Hawkeye sen-sei before he slipped out the door, and fell against the wall outside the room with a sigh. With the apex of his head pressed to the wall, Roy glared at the ceiling. Manureville?! What had he done to deserve such banishment? How did smacking your knee on a slab of oak constitute 'manure-al labor'?

Roy lifted his head from the wall when he heard a clattering in the kitchen across the hall from him. _The kitchen?! Riza!_ Manureville sounded good as Roy turned like a whipped out top to rush down the hall...then...Bam! Ceramic knick-knacks clattered on their polished perch as Roy smacked into a completely useless hall table, stubbing his toes on one of its solid wooden legs.

_Damn it! Boots!! Why didn't I put the boots on this morning?!_ He cursed himself as limped down the hall, with his thumb knuckle lodged in his mouth to stifle the pain in his sandal clad foot. He bitterly decided to stop off at his room to change his shoes, and seriously considered checking if he had an old pair of knee pads still laying around from the days when he use to play sports and have a life. But he knew he wouldn't find them, nothing on the entire expanse of the Hawkeye estate could be found that was made for frivolous fun. This was where fun went to die.

And it was alway too damn hot!

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The summer heat was sweltering, but the humid air mingled with the warm, sweet scent of honeysuckle in the garden was enchantingly intoxicating. Riza Hawkeye breathed it in deeply, letting the pollen spores tinkle her her nose and go to her head like a fancy in a day dream. She bent down and dug her fingers in the soil around the roots of a basil plaint and wiggled it free in a few short jerks. She held the herb up to the light to check for dry and wilted spots, and the sun sneaked through the small parts between the tiny leaves and splashed spotty, bright highlights across her face and eyes. She squinted and fond the specimen suitable enough, setting it in the basket she carried with her.

Summer was harsh on the garden's greens and the hardy herbs had not even escaped withering in the weather. She let out a sigh. Oh well, planting would be an involving task in the spring but she would do it regardless. She turned around to head back inside when her eyes flickered over toward the window of her father's study, and she was startled by the dark, tilted eyes of her fathers apprentice staring at her.

She froze and watched flabbergasted as he immediately turned away and hit his knee on his own desk. Riza rushed over to the back door swung open into the kitchen, and fell back against the decorative white lattice work cross-hatching the door's window. She instinctively blushed; she didn't like too much attention directed towards her, and that someone was watching her without her knowledge made her stomach dance with butterflies. But through it all, an uncontrollable smile pulled at her lips as she remembered him hitting his knee and she couldn't suppress a giggle.

He was a funny little boy, she had always thought so since their first meeting. He had showed up at their door, a suitcase that was worse for ware swinging at his side, and a subtle, confident twinkle in his eyes. He was very dedicated to his studies, but also had a ornery little streak that was continually getting him disciplinary duty with Harrison in the stables. Like the time he'd had tried to show off his Alchemy skills in school and ended up singeing a row desks, or the time he went sneaking around the old abandoned bottle factory and fell trough the eaten away wood and fiber glass of the seconds floor engine room and broke his ankle. She had ignored him for the most part, she didn't see the need to get close to anyone else when the two people she had cared for most in the world were either dead or unresponsive. But he was amusing entertainment from a strictly third class, balcony seat sort of vantage.

She tread lightly into the kitchen, still unhinged, and took a colander out of the bottom cubbed to the right of the stove and set it upon the counter. She emptied the contents of her braided wicker basket into the perforated bowl, and started running the greens under the faucet water.

At the sound of a door slamming she looked up from the vegetables she'd been cleaning and turned up her ears' radar. Everything was quiet again, though, so she set the colander on the counter, the excess water soaked up by the vegetables seeping on to the tile. It was then that she heard a loud clatter out in the hall once more, than a strained and irritated male shout.

She peeped out around the arch leading out of the kitchen and spotted Roy limping down the hall, his left thumb seemed to be clinched in his mouth from what she could she from behind him. The spectacle was so jarring that she absently called out to him

"Mr. Mustang?" She immediately regretted it the moment he turned around and nearly fell to the ground for his unsure, single footed balance. He stared at her like she were grim reaper, poised and ready to extract his soul, and she felt nearly as intrepid as he looked. She clutched the wall of the arch tightly, and waited for him to answer.

"Little Miss - re... Miss Hawkeye?"

Riza arched an eyebrow at his verbal falter and then slid her eyes over to the hall table, seeing it's delicate vases and figurings toppled over in disarray.

"Are you all right?" she managed to asked.

"Yeah, I...uh..." he also looked toward the hall table. "I thought I'd get a little exercise helping Harrison in the stables."

Riza narrowed her eyes slightly; what had he done this time, she wondered?

"Okay, dinner will be ready in about an hour." she said.

"Right. I'll be there. And washed."

"Right." she said, but didn't retreat back into the kitchen and he didn't depart either. They awkwardly stared at one other while and she noted how attractive he was. She studied his face, the low light of the hallway sconces running the curves of his soft, young jaw, and found herself wondering if he would ever grow out of the baby fat, if it would ever define into strong clean lines. It seemed like something she would like to see, and she wondered at where the desire came from.

Roy blinked and turned his head away to stare at the floor, and the sallow light shifted from his face to streak his black hair in sleek glints. Riza blinked as well, "Okay, then." he said, rubbing the back of his neck. "I got to go."

She nodded and watched him leave, dragging his injured foot behind him. Yes, he was very funny, she thought. Maybe she'd move from the balcony and buy a front row ticket one of these days. It might be nice to have a friend.


End file.
